Why you should spend the extra time to meet your recruiter

According to the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC), the recruitment industry is worth a cool £35.1billiona year to the UK economy. That is certainly not a figure to be sniffed at. When you consider that there are over 9,500recruitment agencies in operation in the UK with an annual turnover in excess of £250,000, you can see what a big player the recruitment industry has become.

The whys and wherefores of the current state of play – or a debate about the pros and cons of the recruitment marketplace – are not the purpose of this blog. That’s for another time and place. Instead, we are focusing today on a single (but very important) issue: why you should take the time to meet your recruiter.

Meet your recruiter face-to-face

Okay, so meeting your recruiter face-to-face might seem a little bit ‘last century’. And, for many companies, the whole point of outsourcing recruitment is to put the ball into the court of the experts, with the primary concern being to allow you to free up more time to focus on the day-to-day running of your business.

Taking the time to meet with your recruiter might seem like it is defeating the object somehow. But doing so is anything but. It defeats nothing. In fact, you cannot lose. Meeting your recruiter is a win-win situation.

Let us get a feel for your business

In today’s ultra-competitive tech market, getting a feel for the culture of a business is highly important. As expert recruiters, we can obviously tell a lot about a company from its website, a few emails, even a telephone call. But nothing tells us as much – or as clearly – as a face-to-face meeting can.

It’s more than just seeing the whites of a person’s eyes – a face-to-face allows you to really get a feel and to get under the skin of what a business is looking for. Finding top talent that is a great fit in terms of skill set is one thing. Ensuring that the candidate is also a great cultural fit is often harder. But it is equally important. This is why taking the time to meet your recruiter is so important.

Succeeding in a competitive candidate-driven market

It works both ways, of course. You will find out about your recruiter by actually meeting them. Your recruiter will source you the best available talent by actually meeting potential candidates too.

In a market that is so competitive and candidate-driven, we will be able to sell your business far more successfully to the highest calibre of candidates if we fully appreciate what makes your business tick.

The importance of soft skills

In tech, it is the softer skills that tend to get overlooked. Of course, you cannot underestimate the importance of these skills. In fact, they can often be a deal breaker at interview. So, there’s another great reason for taking the time to meet your recruiter.

Finally, there’s another very good reason to take the extra time to meet up with your recruiter… you’ll get a free lunch or drink out of it!